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Finished The Stars, Like Dust ~ good novel with anticlimactic and cheesy twist ending.

Started Michael Chabon's ominously titled short novel Final Solution: A Story of Dectection on audiobook here at work.

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@plainoldme,

Quote:

I'm alternating between the short stories of Ernest Hemingway

You get the feeling that absolutely everthing Hemingway wrote was autobiographical?

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@hingehead,

hingehead wrote:

I'd never realised that The Twelve Chairs that Mel Brooks made a movie of in 1970 was based on a Russian classic - just read that Mel's mothers family were Russian jews from Kiev.

Is the film any good? I like Mel's classics.

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@Gargamel,

Yes, it's a good movie. Not typical Brooksian shtick, but good nonetheless.

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@Gargamel,

My recollection of it is that is good, and like Joe says it's not typical Brooks, I think he plays it pretty straight (by his terms).

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Just finished the novel Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson.
Hypnotic writing style, the kind that juuuust peels back enough of the next layer of the story (please, please, you say, rip the bandage off. But he won't and doesn't.)
Now reading non-fiction Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman.
Halfway through, I have to say, I'm learning something on every page.
Joe(old dogs can too learn)Nation

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@Joe Nation,

Joe Nation wrote:

Now reading non-fiction Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman.
Halfway through, I have to say, I'm learning something on every page.

I just finished reading Ehrman's Lost Christianities. A bit less scholarly than I would have expected, and he does get repetitive, but it is a very interesting look at early Christianity and its variants.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Joe Nation wrote:
Now reading non-fiction Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman.
Halfway through, I have to say, I'm learning something on every page.

I just finished reading Ehrman's Lost Christianities. A bit less scholarly than I would have expected, and he does get repetitive, but it is a very interesting look at early Christianity and its variants.

He also tends to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

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@JPB,

That may be true in some of his other books, but Lost Christianities is a fairly straightforward examination of the theological controversies that embroiled the church in its first couple of centuries. A number of "what if?" digressions that I could have done without, but otherwise not a lot of focus on modern theology.

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@joefromchicago,

I'm currently reading another of his books, The New Testament, A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings which is written and used as a text book for a Religious Studies class at Yale online.

There's also a companion book to Lost Christianities called Lost Scriptures. I read them a few years ago and liked having the companion book as I read Lost Christianities.

I'm also reading a couple of John Dominic Crossan's books, The Birth of Christianity and Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography

Crossan (who still considers himself a Catholic, albeit a non-traditional one) takes less of a turn away from Christianity than does Ehrman.

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@JPB,

Yeah, as I understand it, Ehrman started as a seminarian and turned into an agnostic. I think that does come out in his writings.

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I'm giving the History of Rome (with its pink stripes) a break and picked up Julio Cortazar's Blow-up and Other Stories.
I suppose 'wow' isn't in the best story analysis tradition, but that's what I think about the book. I got this from a list of good latin american writers that Fbaezer suggested some years ago on a2k. It's been in the to-read stack for too long.

Some of his suggestions -
http://able2know.org/topic/46413-1#post-1212983
http://able2know.org/topic/46413-1#post-1213323
http://able2know.org/topic/46413-1#post-1213413
http://able2know.org/topic/46413-1#post-1217937
http://able2know.org/topic/46413-2#post-1223117

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

tsarstepan wrote:

Started Michael Chabon's ominously titled short novel Final Solution: A Story of Dectection on audiobook here at work.

Finished Final Solution right now. Despite the title, the book is a quaint murder mystery of the classic English mystery ilk.

Reviewers claim this nameless retired detective of 89 years of age is the elderly Sherlock Holmes. Neither here nor there. This nameless old man as he's refered to by the narrator, is consulted to help find out the details of a recent murder in a relatively crime free Sussex, England during the midst of WWII.

A young mute German boy and his missing parrot are the heart of this charming story.

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@kickycan,

Wow. I have got to see this.

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@Joe Nation,

Joe Nation wrote:

Now reading non-fiction Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman.
Halfway through, I have to say, I'm learning something on every page.
Joe(old dogs can too learn)Nation

I liked that book also. Let me tell you how it ends. Smile

Seriously, though, Ehrman's concluding point is very interesting: Like the U.S. Constitution, the Gospels need to be re-interpreted once in a while.

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

No they don't wande. Explained better to those who have only a passing prejudice about them maybe.

The teller of the truth nobody wants to hear gets it. Probably correctly as the world cannot function without hypocrisy.

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

I'm giving the History of Rome (with its pink stripes) a break. . .

Is that Livy's history?

I'm towards the end of C. E. Robinson's history, at Hadrian.

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@InfraBlue,

No - I've read that, but too long ago. (Mind like a sieve, you know.) It's by Michael Grant. Very dry, but I've learned some things I didn't know.

C. E. Robinson, I'll check it out.

Have you been to Rome? I could kick myself for not walking in the rain to Hadrian's villa (from the bus stop).

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Nothing so scholarly here. With the hype about the the newest Harry Potter coming out a while back I decided to revisit the series. I had not read them for a few years and I am glad to realize I still like them quite a bit. I am halfway through the Deathly Hallows now.

Once I finish that there is a book at Barnes and Noble about the wives of Ghengis Khan and how they helped form the government that came up from his uniting the tribes. Sounds VERY interesting.

I also got a library card today, so who knows what could be next!

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Uh oh.
It turns out Elmore Leonard, a writer I like, has a son, Peter Leonard, who also writes crime books, one just published in the last week or two, I think. It happens to be set in Rome, my favorite city.

http://www.peterleonardbooks.com/

His books at amazon -
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=peter+leonard&x=17&y=20

1 Reply

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